We are considering upgrading our year old Premiere to the XL4. I think the only benefit would be the 4 tuners? I currently have a lifetime sub on our Premiere.

Have any of you been successful in buying a new XL4 and transferring your lifetime sub from an existing Premiere?

It's one thing to buy a completely new box but I just cannot justify having to repurchase the LT.

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The XL4 also has a 2 TB hard drive. So it has significantly more storage space than a stock Premiere (320 GB) or Premiere XL (1 TB). (but doesn't support an antenna; I don't know if that's important to you)

But I haven't heard of anyone being able to get their lifetime transfered. Now when I upgrade to an XL4 (technically an Elite; it has the original branding) I was able to sell my TiVo HD w/ lifetime for almost the cost of the lifetime (counting the $100 multi-unit discount price for lifetime).

So you might look at what a lifetime subscribed Premiere is selling for on ebay or craigslist. Even if you can't transfer the service you might be able to sell your old unit for enough to cover the new service.

To me the worst thing about tivo is not being able to transfer your lifetime service to a new tivo. or at the very least they shouldnt charge you more than $99.00 to transfer your lifetime to another tivo!

To me the worst thing about tivo is not being able to transfer your lifetime service to a new tivo. or at the very least they shouldnt charge you more than $99.00 to transfer your lifetime to another tivo!

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That's their business model. The only time (other than some very early S1 boxes) that I've heard them allowing a transfer of LT is when you need to replace a broken out of warranty box. Seems they have offered some folks the opportunity to do that for $149.

That's their business model. The only time (other than some very early S1 boxes) that I've heard them allowing a transfer of LT is when you need to replace a broken out of warranty box. Seems they have offered some folks the opportunity to do that for $149.

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AFAIR, there have been three "lifetime transfer" opportunities.

I think there was one from S1 -> S2. This MAY have been a free transfer.. I don't remember, but it wasn't ever appealing to me. (They didn't do it when the S2DT came out, or I might have been interested in that.)

They did a lifetime transfer to the S3. I don't remember how much this cost..

They did a lifetime transfer to the Tivo HD. I seem to remember it cost $200 + you got a free year on your existing Tivo (e.g. S1 or S2), which was still way less than the new lifetime cost was.

I think I ended up paying around $800 for my S3 including lifetime, and somewhere around $450 for my Tivo HD including lifetime.

I would do another 'transfer' to an XL4 if it came up, but I admit I'm starting to lean towards getting one anyway.. (though most of the hardware paid through Best Buy GCs I got by using the Viggle app).. I'm even thinking about before the Olympics start, to have more tuners.

They did a lifetime transfer to the S3. I don't remember how much this cost..

They did a lifetime transfer to the Tivo HD. I seem to remember it cost $200 + you got a free year on your existing Tivo (e.g. S1 or S2), which was still way less than the new lifetime cost was.

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I had a similar offer which I had used in 2007, transfer lifetime from a S1 to a Tivo HD. What happened was, buy a year at $199 on the THD, and it took 2 months to exchange the subs between the S1 and THD. After the 2 months and the transfers happened, I called tivo back and had them switch the remaining of the year's service to my current S2 and to remove the S1 completely. After that, the S1 was then set as new, never subscribed again.